Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Comment: Creases and lines in the spine from heavy reading. Stray markings in the text. Curled covers. Wear to the covers and edges. Fast shipping from Amazon. B

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a service we offer sellers that lets them store their products in Amazon's fulfillment centers, and we directly pack, ship, and provide customer service for these products. Something we hope you'll especially enjoy: FBA items qualify for FREE Shipping and Amazon Prime.

When Hitler’s government collapsed in 1945, Germany was immediately divided up under the control of the Allied Powers and the Soviets. A nation in tatters, in many places literally flattened by bombs, was suddenly subjected to brutal occupation by vengeful victors. According to recent estimates, as many as two million German women were raped by Soviet occupiers. General Eisenhower denied the Germans access to any foreign aid, meaning that German civilians were forced to subsist on about 1,200 calories a day. (American officials privately acknowledged at the time that the death rate amongst adults had risen to four times the pre-war levels; child mortality had increased tenfold). With the authorization of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, over four million Germans were impressed into forced labor. General George S. Patton was so disgusted by American policy in post-war Germany that he commented in his diary, “It is amusing to recall that we fought the revolution in defense of the rights of man and the civil war to abolish slavery and have now gone back on both principles"

Although an astonishing 2.5 million ordinary Germans were killed in the post-Reich era, few know of this traumatic history. There has been an unspoken understanding amongst historians that the Germans effectively got what they deserved as perpetrators of the Holocaust. First ashamed of their national humiliation at the hands of the Allies and Soviets, and later ashamed of the horrors of the Holocaust, Germans too have remained largely silent – a silence W.G. Sebald movingly described in his controversial book On the Natural History of Destruction.

In After the Reich, Giles MacDonogh has written a comprehensive history of Germany and Austria in the postwar period, drawing on a vast array of contemporary first-person accounts of the period. In doing so, he has finally given a voice the millions of who, lucky to survive the war, found themselves struggling to survive a hellish “peace.”

A startling account of a massive and brutal military occupation, After the Reich is a major work of history of history with obvious relevance today.

Mass deportations, murder, and brutalization of helpless noncombatantsthese are the crimes one readily associates with Hitler's minions as they ravaged their way across Europe. But Macdonogh, a journalist with particular expertise in German history, convincingly illustrates that this was the fate of millions of German-speaking civilians in the period from the fall of Vienna to the Soviets to the Berlin airlift. The massive number of rapes conducted by Soviet soldiers in their zone of occupation has already been well documented. Less publicized but equally disturbing, as Macdonogh's use of eyewitness testimonies confirm, was the treatment of ethnic Germans in their enclaves in various Eastern and Central European nations. There, murder and the driving out of millions of people were routine, and the French, British, and Americans did nothing to stop them. Given the horrors visited upon Europe by the Nazis, one might be tempted to consider these atrocities as just retribution. However, Macdonogh's eloquent account of the suffering of these people is, hopefully, able to evoke strong feelings of both revulsion and compassion from most readers. Freeman, Jay
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

“After the Reich” is to my mind the definitive account of Germany’s post-war experience. Even a casual reader of Modern European history will have acquired, if only by osmosis, a reasonably solid understanding of how and why the Germans reaped what they had sown, will be familiar with the success and shortcomings of the Nuremberg war trials and the years-long jousting between the victorious allies about how to allocate the spoils. But, not surprisingly, it turns out that this knowledge only skims the surface of the real story, a story that will make readers both cringe and marvel, and inevitably come away with a whole new appreciation of the war’s aftermath.

The first part of the book unsurprisingly reads very much like “Savage Continent,” Keith Lowe’s account of the retributive machinations of damaged and disaffected populations throughout the continent taking advantage of their bloody victories to settle old scores with surpassing brutality. MacDonogh naturally focuses on the German experience and his descriptions of the predations of all of the occupying forces, and especially the Russian orgy of rapine, is at least as difficult, if edifying, to get through as Lowe’s accounts.

But the story is of course much more than that and, indeed, so much more that a knowledgeable reader will likely credit this as the definitive work on the subject. I found especially interesting the author’s reflections on the shaky legal underpinnings of the Nuremberg trials and the disconcerting conclusions of his research demonstrating beyond contradiction that an amazing number of bad Nazi actors not only escaped justice but in many instances did so simply because both Allied and German prosecutorial officials grew tired of the game. Finally, I know of no better account of how thoroughly Russia dominated the tripartite spoils competition, partly due to Stalin’s preternatural gall and duplicity, the fact that Russian forces first occupied territories that Britain and America knew were not going to relinquished without a fight they were unable to offer, and the combination of Roosevelt’s failing health and inexplicable, if difficult to quantify, trust in Stalin.

Our modern vision of Germany as a peaceful, prosperous and progressive nation makes this book all the more important because it demonstrates as nothing else that I’ve read how close to Hell the country and its people had to come before the eventual redemption. Believe me when I say that no associative readings in European history have equipped you with the knowledge this book provides. I recommend it as essential reading for the serious History buff.

I wanted to like this book by Giles MacDonogh more than I actually did. After the Reich had its moments of great interest as it recounted the chaotic, brutal, and bloody aftermath of World War 2 in Germany. However, there were times where it deviated from its focus. It got sidetracked in Austria for a while, and its endless focus on the brutal Allied actions in occupied Germany in the immediate aftermath of war was a far lengthier account than it needed to be. No question it was a horrific was a time, but it became exhausting to continue reading this author's account of that time, which is why I paused reading for a few months but finally finished 6 months to finish. As a far better alternative, I found Keith Lowe's outstanding history, Savage Continent, about the same period, to be a much better book, truly an eye-opening read, which I would recommend far more than MacDonogh's book. Unfortunately, After the Reich just didn't live up to Lowe's brilliant book about the same period.

What an outstandingly researched and authored book describing from first hand and historical factual accounting, the allied "invasion" of Germany, Austria etc. post Reich. My personal opinions follow the reading of this excellent account. It is shocking and quite horrendous to read about the absolute brutality individuals suffered at the hands of the Russians the Czechs, the Americans, British and French. To argue that Germans as a whole did not pay for their transgressions, would be wholly inaccurate. Shocking was the Nacht und Nebel practiced by the Russians who argued that since they suffered invasion and subsequent brutality at the hands of the Germans, felt completely absolved from any kind of appalling behavior on their part. The wholesale rape of women by the Russians was unspeakable. Other allied forces engaged in this disgraceful torture as well, but the Russians participated in it with the vengeance of self entitlement. The allies would like to portray themselves as being benign and law abiding caretakers of a post WWII Germany but this would be so far from the truth as to be an utter lie. The mass starvation, feral starving and dying children and dreadful conditions thrust upon German civilians and POW's alike, combined with slave labor many if not most of them were subjected to, is stunning. The victors embraced the same behaviors as the conquered. The suicide rates amongst civilians and POW's continued many many years after 1945 due to inhabitable living conditions, starvation and hopelessness. Clearly, war, regardless of the causes and the instigators is a nightmarish scenario where there are never ever any winners. Everyone loses in every way. Will humanity never learn?

This should be taught in all schools, being American, German, and Russian... the Russians were just deplorable and many should have been shot! They were brutal and all under orders from Stalin that not only allowed them to Rape & Pillage and ordered them to do so